Blogging Tools

Search all "Bits from Bill"

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Fake MSNBC Breaking News

Last week I mentioned that I was seeing a lot of Email malware attacks with the Subject: CNN.com Daily Top Ten. This attack method came along with some teaser headlines and a fake update to Adobe Flash. I’m sorry to say these attacks were fairly successful and too many users were tricked.

This week they’re trying the same trick but there’s a new subject line that says “msnbc.com – BREAKING NEWS:“ followed up a teaser headline. These Emails can be deleted immediately although you shouldn’t be worried if you just opened it up and then deleted it.

If however you do click on the news link which appears to be from MSNBC you’ll see something like this…

At this point your goal should be to get rid of this page by shutting down your browser. If you click on the red X you’ll just end up in a loop. This is the time to press “Ctrl-Alt-Del” to look at the list of running “Processes” or in WinPatrol “Active Tasks”. You’ll want to find IExplore.exe, firefox.exe or waol.exe select it and click on “End Process”. (WinPatrol users “Kill Task”)